What happened next.

So I guess my last post was a bit of a cliffhanger but honestly, that’s what it felt like when I found out. So I was sitting in Jaden’s garden with him and his mum, Becky. We were chatting about normal things and everything was mostly fine. Then Becky asks Jaden to go inside. She tells me something very personal and I tell her something very personal. Then she tells me that she thinks Jaden cheated on me. I sit, stony in my silence, unable to process this fresh new pain, and she calls Jaden outside. She tells him he has to tell me everything. He admits that he cheated on me with one of my best friends. CB. We’ll call her CB. I was devastated. He told me what he had done with her, that it had happened once in February when we got together and my heart broke. I felt it crash and fall to pieces on his garden patio and lay there like grains of forgotten sand. I could feel everything around me crashing in. The sky was moving towards me at an alarming rate. The floor was reaching up to my body, trying to pull me down. My fear was curling round my feet, surrounding my ankles like a vine and holding me stuck to my chair. And all the while, Jaden sat there not saying a word. My life ended and he said nothing.

As he continued not to talk I began to cry. It just hit me suddenly like a wave. I needed to cry. The tears had built up inside whilst I sat and finally exploded like a dam. I couldn’t stop. Somewhere in between this he told me that my friends all knew. Pod, Bry, Dan. They all knew. The pain that hit then was what made me run. I was gasping for air. I couldn’t believe that this kind of pain was real. In that moment I knew that no matter who was around me, I would always be alone. My best friends knew and they didn’t tell me. The betrayal gathered in my throat like a thick piece of material, choking me and keeping my throat from swallowing. I’d never had a reason to mistrust my friends before. I thought no matter what that I could rely on them. They were my life line. My heart was ripped out and then ripped out again. My fucking friends didn’t tell me. So I ran. Becky told him he had to follow me. As I ran from his, Bry ran out from Dan’s house and followed me too. She kept shouting my name, saying please. She kept saying please and that is almost all I remember. Bry shouting please at me. I ran to a block of garages and collapsed on the floor. My legs just gave out. I could stand no longer. The life had gone from my body, as well as any hope of ever feeling okay again. I had no hope left in anyone. The shock had left me unable to stop crying. But this wasn’t crying. This was wailing. Wailing and gasping for air and shaking and begging the world to make this not true. The problem is that it was. And through it all Jaden just stood looking at me. Pain like this shouldn’t exist; it isn’t fair that anyone should ever feel this way. My worst enemy shouldn’t have to feel this way. The utter disgust that Jaden had done this to me, that CB had done this to me.. it crippled me. There are no other words. I had such faith that Jaden was a good person, that he’d never hurt me. With other guys, I had expected unfaithfulness. Not even that, just pain and betrayal. But Jaden was different. Or so I thought.

I was so destroyed that my friends hadn’t told me. Bry kept trying to hold me and I pushed her away, so hard, but she wouldn’t stop trying. She swore to me that she had only just found out and that she’d told Jaden if he didn’t tell me, she would. She knew that I had found out, she was listening from Dan’s garden. I couldn’t look at her I felt so hurt and alone. But eventually, I began to rationalise that Bry was too good a friend to betray me without good reason. I listened to her version of how she found out and I believed her. I let her hold me while I sobbed. And then the anger hit. How could Pod betray me like this? My sister? How? How, after everything, could she protect CB and not tell me? I message Pod, and I can’t even remember what I say. It’s all a blur. But next thing I know, she’s right next to me apologising. She tells me it’s hard to decide whether to be friends with me or CB. That she’s caught “between a rock and a hard place”. I want to scream at her. What about me? Does anyone fucking care how I feel? Why is everyone acting like they are the victim when my life was just torn apart? I wanted to scream but my voice wouldn’t comply. I was so shocked, so shocked that Pod would even need to think about it. Shouldn’t it be obvious? Is she really considering being friends with CB after this? I’m so angry – so angry, but at the same time not even angry so much as mortally broken inside – and she tells me that she wanted to tell me this whole time. That hurt more. That she’d known the entire time. The feeling is indescribable. I don’t think there’s a word for it. There can’t be a word for it. The next thing I remember is being in Pod’s house, somewhat calmed down, when Lu phones me and I tell her what happened and Pod lets slip that it wasn’t once. Jaden cheated on me three times with CB. Three times. Not once. Three. Fucking. Times. I was hit by new emotion. It is the freshest, rawest pain on this planet earth and I would have taken bullets rather than that anguish. I would take anything over feeling that. He lied to me. He looked me in the eye and lied. I crawled back to hysterics. I couldn’t keep the pain at bay, it was poking at my skull like a woodpecker and telling me I was worthless.

My first thoughts when I found out was that I was worthless. Disgusting. Dirty. Used. Ugly. Impure. Sullied. Just plain disgusting. I remembered how CB had had a crush on Jaden the whole time, how we all knew only I was the only one who didn’t know. I thought about the times she had driven to mine to pick him up and take him home. Had it happened then? Or the times he had stayed over at hers and I had been unbothered because I trusted them both. Definitely then? About how CB had sat in the pub where I work and told me that she had seen Jaden naked before, that she had undressed him herself, that she had admired him shirtless, and I laugh it off because I feel sorry for her, having a crush on him and trying to make me jealous. Because I know, I know that Jaden would never betray me like that. That Jaden would never look at another girl because I am good enough for him. And I realise this and everything clicks and my heart stops as I realise CB had taunted me with the truth and I had been too trusting to realise. I had thought they were good friends. But she had just been after my boyfriend. She just wanted to rub it in, in her cruel, sadistic way. And Jaden? God knows what Jaden was thinking. So eventually, Jaden tells me the whole truth. Says he didn’t tell me because he was so scared that I would leave him and he’d never see me again. Says that he’s so ashamed he can never make it up to me but he wants to try. That each time they cheated on me together, he was fucked off his head on alcohol or drugs. That he did it because he felt like he wasn’t good enough for me. I was too good. I was so good that he cheated on me with one of my “best friends”???? Yeah. Okay, Jaden. Sure.

And then I remember that she had shown me private tweets of Pod’s on an account I didn’t follow (which I now know is because the tweets were about her guilt over knowing what they’d done and not telling me) tweets that said Pod felt uncomfortable around Jaden because he reminded her of ***. That I can’t follow the private, she’s the only one who does. And I was worried because that made me think of J***. And CB told me that I was right to be scared. That I should be scared of him. That, because of what J*** did to me, I should stay away from Jaden. My boyfriend. She tried to make me scared of my boyfriend so she could have him all to herself. The bitch. How could I have trusted her? How? And she doesn’t even apologise to me for wrecking my life, just moans to Pod about having no friends left. Yeah, CB, that’s because you cheated with my boyfriend and tried to rub it in before I even knew. That kind of cruelty is fucked up. How could anyone do that? Why would anyone want to do that? It’s too fucked up for comprehension.

So anyway. Pod and I are okay. Pod has assured me she will never be CB’s friend again. That she wanted to tell me but was intimidated by Jaden. That she told Bry because the guilt of knowing was killing her. She is forgiven. Pod’s mum, who is amazing by the way, gave me a mummy cuddle and told me how awful Pod had felt this whole time. So anyway, sorry for the lengthy, depressing post. I needed to let that out.